This week sees us returning to a very old well to revisit a topic we last touched on during our old run at 1UP.com (long before Bob ever came on board!): Konami's Suikoden series. Specifically, this episode concerns the first two games in the franchise, Suikoden I & II for PlayStation. We explored the full gamut of the series in our previous examination of the series 10 years ago, so this return trip offers a bit of contrast that demonstrates our current approach to topics. That is to say, rather than going for breadth these days, we attempt to dig for greater depth by narrowing our focus.

There's one other thing about our previous Suikoden episode worth mentioning here: The recent passing of former 1UP editor and Retronauts contributor Andrew Fitch. Andrew took part in our 2008 examination of Suikoden along with this week's returning guest Shivam Bhatt, so his loss stung even harder. Everyone on the show this week has fond memories of Andrew, so we decided to devote the first segment of the episode (whose topic had been set well before any of us knew about his health issues) to remembering the good times we had working and hanging out together. If you're interested in seeing what Andrew (who worked on localizing Suikoden V) had to say about these games, you can check out our 2008 episode on Archive.org.